3of4Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (C) signs the Fostering Undergraduate Talent by Unlocking Resources for Education (FUTURE) Act during the enrollment ceremony in the Rayburn Room at the U.S. Capitol December 17, 2019 in Washington, DC. The FUTURE Act, which supports historically black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions, was passed as part of a larger federal budget bill that passed Tuesday and is expected to be signed by President Donald Trump. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — One of President Trump’s counterattacks against House Democrats’ all-but-certain impeachment of him is that the entire process has distracted Congress from doing the people’s business.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats “are not getting important legislation done, hence, the Do Nothing Democrats,” Trump tweeted Nov. 24, after a week of witness testimony in the impeachment inquiry. House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield said on Fox News this week that Democrats “have abandoned their so-called ‘for the people’ agenda.”

Pelosi, D-San Francisco, has responded with a torrent of votes and breakthrough deals on legislation, some of it bipartisan and much of it aimed at showing the party is fulfilling promises it made in the 2018 midterm elections in which the Democrats gained control of the House.

As the House approaches its likely vote Wednesday to make Trump only the third president ever to be impeached, it has passed major bills to combat soaring prescription drug prices and to offer a path to legal status to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrant farmworkers.

Democratic leadership has also announced surprise deals with the White House, including an overhauled U.S., Mexico and Canada trade agreement that includes new labor and environmental protections.

And on Tuesday, lawmakers approved a $1.37 trillion spending agreement with the Trump administration. The plan, which would avert another government shutdown, includes money for progressive priorities such as gun-violence research — something Congress hadn’t funded for more than two decades — and a ban on the sale of tobacco to anyone under 21.

Pelosi’s allies say the blitz is a testament to her skills as a political tactician — she’s waging an impeachment war on one front while notching legislative victories that could help Democrats hold the House in the 2020 election.

“This is a strange phenomenon to me, that people think you can only do one thing at a time,” said Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord. “If the American people got the information of what’s happening here ... they would be really proud of what we’re doing, because we’re doing a lot.”

The danger for Democrats: Trump is all but assured of Senate acquittal in an impeachment trial, will be running for re-election next year and is gaining victories in Congress that will back up what his campaign touts as “promises kept.”

Pelosi’s two-pronged approach was on display Thursday as the House Judiciary Committee debated articles of impeachment alleging that Trump was guilty of abusing the powers of his office, for seeking a Ukrainian announcement of investigations that could damage Democrats, and of obstructing Congress’ investigation.

As Democrats and Republicans on the panel argued, Pelosi stood at the podium for her weekly news conference and talked about the “kitchen table” bills sailing through the House.

One was the Lower Drug Costs Now Act, which passed mostly on the strength of Democratic votes. The bill would allow the federal government, a huge purchaser of medicines, to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies and require that they be aligned with the average price in other developed countries.

Pelosi also praised lawmakers in both parties who approved the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, the bill to provide a path to legal status to undocumented farm workers. In exchange for potentially granting legal status, the bill would mandate that agricultural employers ensure that the workers they hire are in the U.S. legally.

Pelosi noted that much of what the House has passed this year has gone dormant in the Republican-controlled Senate, including a bill passed earlier this year that would require background checks of gun buyers in private transactions such as at gun shows. The House’s drug-pricing legislation is also unlikely to pass the Senate, which is considering its own bill.

“No, it’s not all we’re doing,” she said. “We’ve sent you bills that have not only bipartisanship in the House, but also in the country.”

But Pelosi’s strategy carries a political risk for Democrats: It could also help Trump.

A new trade deal to fix what Trump said was wrong with NAFTA was one of his main 2016 campaign promises. The president tweeted last week that the new agreement is “the best and most important trade deal ever made by the USA.”

The government funding deal that would avert another shutdown includes $1.3 billion for a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border, another Trump campaign promise — although he said in 2016 that Mexico would pay for it.

David Greenberg, a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers University, said Pelosi has a balancing act to perform in supporting two starkly different kinds of Democratic lawmakers. She must satisfy those from solidly blue districts, whose constituents are committed to impeachment, while protecting those from battlegrounds where voters are far more divided on whether to oust Trump.

“It’s very important for those people to remind their constituents that they haven’t been sucked into the partisan vortex of rage on impeachment,” Greenberg said of moderate Democrats.

The trade deal in particular could help those Democrats, especially lawmakers from districts that have lost manufacturing and agricultural jobs to globalization. But, Greenberg said, it’s possible that voters in those districts will see Trump, not their member of Congress, as the change agent.

Dustin Gardiner is a state Capitol reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle. He joined The Chronicle in 2019, after nearly a decade with The Arizona Republic, where he covered state and city politics. Dustin won several awards for his reporting in Arizona, including the 2019 John Kolbe Politics Reporting award, and the 2017 Story of the Year award from the Arizona Newspapers Association. Outside of work, he enjoys hiking, camping, reading fiction and playing Settlers of Catan. He's a member of NLGJA, the association of LGBTQ journalists.